Famke Janssen

"I'M A NATURAL athlete." "Actually, she's a natural competitor." Sitting in a booth at Jerry's Deli in Studio City, actor-writer-director Chris Eigeman and his current leading lady, the strikingly tall, Dutch-born actress Famke Janssen, weren't trading opinions on Janssen's sporting prowess. Rather, they were discussing her recently acquired skills at billiards -- skills that are on abundant display in Eigeman's debut as a bona-fide filmmaker with "Turn the River."

- The fireflies in this coastal Ontario town had begun to materialize over the estate's sprawling lawn. Inside a macabre-looking residence, the actors Famke Janssen and Bill Skarsgard slipped through elegant rooms and chilly corridors, a bone-creepy tableau that might be described as "The Addams Family" meets Guillermo del Toro. Her voice musical but no-nonsense, Janssen issued an order to Skarsgard; he responded by trying very hard to look aloof. The location for the production of "Hemlock Grove" - a piece of small-town American Gothic about a murder, a shady company and rampaging werewolves - was quaint, even archaic.

As beautiful as she is, Famke Janssen almost never gets the guy in her movies. Take this summer's mega-hit "X-Men." Though Janssen's Dr. Jean Grey is attracted to the hunky hero Wolverine, she can't seem to abandon her rather stodgy fiancee. Kenneth Branagh spurned her in Woody Allen's "Celebrity." Pierce Brosnan's James Bond found her a bit too much to handle in "GoldenEye." Matt Damon turned her down in "Rounders."

"I'M A NATURAL athlete." "Actually, she's a natural competitor." Sitting in a booth at Jerry's Deli in Studio City, actor-writer-director Chris Eigeman and his current leading lady, the strikingly tall, Dutch-born actress Famke Janssen, weren't trading opinions on Janssen's sporting prowess. Rather, they were discussing her recently acquired skills at billiards -- skills that are on abundant display in Eigeman's debut as a bona-fide filmmaker with "Turn the River."

- The fireflies in this coastal Ontario town had begun to materialize over the estate's sprawling lawn. Inside a macabre-looking residence, the actors Famke Janssen and Bill Skarsgard slipped through elegant rooms and chilly corridors, a bone-creepy tableau that might be described as "The Addams Family" meets Guillermo del Toro. Her voice musical but no-nonsense, Janssen issued an order to Skarsgard; he responded by trying very hard to look aloof. The location for the production of "Hemlock Grove" - a piece of small-town American Gothic about a murder, a shady company and rampaging werewolves - was quaint, even archaic.

"Wake me up when Starbucks is open," quips Famke Janssen, who arrives at a photography studio fresh from filming final scenes for "X-Men," which opened Friday, in which she plays telekinetic superhero Jean Grey. "I wanted to keep Jean Grey's entire wardrobe. It's a lot of knee-length skirts and cashmere tops." The Dutch actress and former model has been at work since 4 a.m., but she shows no signs of surrendering.

In "Actress Famke Janssen May Get the Roles, but Not Always the Guys" (Aug. 26), Susan King begins by listing five movies in which Janssen's character "never gets the guy"--but strangely fails to include the starring role that probably established Janssen's presence as a crucial factor for the effectiveness of this theme. I am referring to a 1992 episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" titled "The Perfect Mate." Janssen has possibly been seen by more viewers in that achingly memorable role than all her other roles combined.

Show of hands, please: Does anyone want to see an amiable romantic dramedy by a maker of sobering religious documentaries? Yes, actually, you do. Oren Rudavsky, whose previous work includes "Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust," has, along with co-screenwriter Daniel Saul Houseman, crafted an odd, funny film out of Daniel Menaker's novel "The Treatment."

With the Titanic, it was a plain old iceberg that did it in. But with "Deep Rising's" brand-new $487.6-million pleasure ship the Argonautica, it's immense sea serpents lurking in the depths of the South China Sea, surfacing to feast on its guests and wrecking the vessel in the process. Imagine a giant octopus, at least as big as a mansion with many more tentacles than eight. Each tentacle is like the hose of a vacuum cleaner, its opening like a Venus' flytrap surrounded by pincers.

It helps that "The Chameleon" is based on a true story because much of what occurs in writer-director Jean-Paul Salomé's tight adaptation of Christophe D'Antonio's book might otherwise seem a bit dubious. That's not to say this moody thriller about professional liar Frédéric Bourdin is without intrigue, it's just better viewed with, er, logistical tolerance. The film finds Nicky, a Baton Rouge, La., youngster missing since 1996, turning up four years later in France claiming he was abducted from his hometown with traumatic consequences.

As beautiful as she is, Famke Janssen almost never gets the guy in her movies. Take this summer's mega-hit "X-Men." Though Janssen's Dr. Jean Grey is attracted to the hunky hero Wolverine, she can't seem to abandon her rather stodgy fiancee. Kenneth Branagh spurned her in Woody Allen's "Celebrity." Pierce Brosnan's James Bond found her a bit too much to handle in "GoldenEye." Matt Damon turned her down in "Rounders."

"Wake me up when Starbucks is open," quips Famke Janssen, who arrives at a photography studio fresh from filming final scenes for "X-Men," which opened Friday, in which she plays telekinetic superhero Jean Grey. "I wanted to keep Jean Grey's entire wardrobe. It's a lot of knee-length skirts and cashmere tops." The Dutch actress and former model has been at work since 4 a.m., but she shows no signs of surrendering.

David Wain, director of "Wet Hot American Summer," creator of the sketch comedy series "The State" and founding member of the improv troupe Stella, brings his popular brand of surrealist yet mundane humor to the big screen with more or less dreadful results. A collection of short films based on the Ten Commandments, "The Ten" is presented by Paul Rudd as a narrator character who lives in a black void with a pair of gigantic stone tablets lurking in the background.

The Scene: It was literally Hollywood meets city of Industry on Monday night as the city's young, hip and restless converged on the Showcase Cineplex Odeon for the premiere of Orion Pictures' "City of Industry," a film about "murder, mystery and madness in the underbelly of Los Angeles," as executive producer Barr Potter put it. The film was directed by John Irvin and stars Harvey Keitel, Stephen Dorff, Famke Janssen, Timothy Hutton and Wade Dominguez.